Question I think I wrecked my hard drives. HELP

[FatherNameChange01]

So I bought a Samsung M.2 NVMe 970 250gb today and spent 15 hours trying to move my Windows 10 over to the new hard drive. For a long time it wasn't working on so many levels I cant remember anymore. Which got me to going into boot settings and formatting all my hard drives I had so I could start fresh and downloading windows 10 again fresh into my M.2. It still doesnt work alone. I have to have both my SSD plugged in and my M.2 for it to even boot up windows even though it says windows is on my m.2. That's not even what I'm worried about anymore at this point as I gave up and just settled for everything finally working again and fast and booting up properly with both plugged in. But now my issue is that when I tried to download steam it wouldn't let me download it into any of the hard drives directly. It would just go into downloads. I tried cutting and pasting into another hard drive and it worked but when I would drag and drop the steam app onto my desktop it wouldn't work unless all the files followed with it. So steam and all of its folders are sitting on my desktop a cluttered there and i dont know what to do anymore. Been frustrated for 15 hours. is there anyone out there that know how to fix my hard drives so they work like they are supposed to? I've never messed anything up so bad before.

 

[COLGeek]

How did you "move" Win 10 to your NVME SSD? What application did you use?

 

[hang-the-9]

So I bought a Samsung M.2 NVMe 970 250gb today and spent 15 hours trying to move my Windows 10 over to the new hard drive. For a long time it wasn't working on so many levels I cant remember anymore. Which got me to going into boot settings and formatting all my hard drives I had so I could start fresh and downloading windows 10 again fresh into my M.2. It still doesnt work alone. I have to have both my SSD plugged in and my M.2 for it to even boot up windows even though it says windows is on my m.2. That's not even what I'm worried about anymore at this point as I gave up and just settled for everything finally working again and fast and booting up properly with both plugged in. But now my issue is that when I tried to download steam it wouldn't let me download it into any of the hard drives directly. It would just go into downloads. I tried cutting and pasting into another hard drive and it worked but when I would drag and drop the steam app onto my desktop it wouldn't work unless all the files followed with it. So steam and all of its folders are sitting on my desktop a cluttered there and i dont know what to do anymore. Been frustrated for 15 hours. is there anyone out there that know how to fix my hard drives so they work like they are supposed to? I've never messed anything up so bad before.

Sounds like you are not really aware of how program setups work and are doing the Windows setup wrong since it's putting files on the second drive. Not sure why you are you moving files around manually and from what you are moving, you are moving things you should not be. Since you started the setup clean, unplug the second drive, then run the setup of Windows on the M.2 drive. Once that is done, shut off the system, connect the second drive.

Now about the programs, what exactly are you trying to do there? Are you trying to have Steam and other programs installed on the second drive?